Whistleblower’s book tells his Humboldt County story

Former nuclear control technician Bob Rowen stands near the now-dismantling PG&E nuclear power plant in King Salmon on Thursday. He wrote a book about his experience as a whistleblower.
Shaun Walker — The Times-Standard

Rowen, a former U.S. Marine, says he was fired for speaking up about safety issues.
Shaun Walker — The Times-Standard

In the time of Edward Snowden and WikiLeaks’ Julian Assange, one of Humboldt County’s older whistleblowers is telling his side of the story in a book chronicling his radioactive relationship with PG&E in the 1960s and early 1970s and what he considers the nuclear power industries’ betrayal of public trust.

No longer the young man he was when he began working as a nuclear control technician at PG&E’s Humboldt Bay Power Plant near King Salmon in 1964, former Eureka resident Robert “Bob” Rowen Jr. said the fears he once had of retaliation against him and his family have dissipated through the years.

“I’m in the twilight years of my life. I’m 74 years old. What’s PG&E going to do to me that’s going to make a hell of a big difference?” he said in an interview with the Times-Standard this week. “I’m not afraid of them.”

With over four decades passing since the allegations were investigated by the now non-existent U.S. Atomic Energy Commission, which found that PG&E had not committed any major safety violations relating to radiation exposure, PG&E North Coast External Communications Representative Brittany McKannay said “we don’t have information to support the allegations that were made nearly 45 years ago and to an agency that no longer exists.”

PG&E has been decommissioning the nuclear power unit of the plant since 2009 after it closed down in 1976.

“Of course that being said, now — in the process we are in — we are committed to decommissioning the plant, keeping communities well informed so they know we continue to do that work very safely,” she said.

‘Humboldt Diary’

Rowen is currently touring the North Coast with his new, self-published book, “My Humboldt Diary: A True Story of Betrayal of the Public Trust,” in which he claims PG&E plant management and related government agencies made decisions or intentionally ignored incidents of radioactive exposure to both power plant employees and members of the surrounding communities. Along with the ensuing aftermath of his whistleblowing activity, the meticulously detailed 487-page diary delves into Rowen’s arguments against the nation’s use of nuclear energy, what he says were attempts to smear his character and investigations, media censorship and the violation of public trust. “I’m wired to expose corruption,” he said. “People fabricate things and have a total disregard for public and employee safety. I’m wired to do something about it. ... It’s corporate America. It’s not just PG&E that engages in this kind of behavior. They’re going to do whatever they find necessary to protect their interests. The whole system seems to be rooted in greed and the bottom line — employee safety, public safety be damned.”

While on the job, Rowen began questioning the “atoms for peace” attitude that existed after the end of World War II, which he admitted he initially supported coming out of service of the U.S. Marine Corps. The company’s radiation safety standards were also under Rowen’s scrutiny, stating in the book that his own military education on atomic energy clashed with statements in the company training manual, which he quotes in the book as stating “there is no evidence that shows that continuous low-level irradiation contributes any appreciable amount to life-span shortening.”

Advertisement

Rowen’s own research at Humboldt State University — a place where he said he would later find friends and supporters among the academic staff — led him to contrasting information, which he wrote down in what would later become his diary. He said he would continue to record and collect documents, recording accounts where he said he discovered radioactive scrap metal pipes being sold to a Eureka company, radioactive material being found outside of the plant’s controlled areas and on employee clothing, and the removal of the radiation air-sample monitor at the nearby South Bay Elementary School that was downwind of the plant.

Rowen wrote that he approached the managerial staff to voice his concerns on each of these issues, but was told he was making “unwarranted accusations against the company,” according to his book.

The fallout

At a May 20, 1970, company safety meeting, Rowen said he and his late colleague Forest Williams decided to voice the information they had gathered to their colleagues and representatives of the Atomic Energy Commission, the federal agency that used to oversee and regulate uses of atomic and nuclear energy. Both were fired within the next month, he said. Rowen said he was fired because management claimed “I threatened my supervisor with bodily harm.”

In the book and in his interview, Rowen admitted he angrily reacted to, but never physically harmed, his supervisor who he said had pointed a finger close to his face after Rowen stuck up Williams, his recently fired friend.

“I still had a lot of Marine in me and I came uncomfortably close to knocking him on his keister but I somehow maintained control of myself,” Rowen wrote in the book.

After being fired from PG&E, Rowen brought his findings to the Atomic Energy Commission, which found that PG&E had not committed any major safety violations relating to radiation exposure in its investigation. Rowen dedicates an entire chapter of the book, “The AEC Whitewash,” to the investigation, listing each of his claims and the agency’s responses.

Rowen said the result of his investigation took a toll on him and his family, with a report being filed against him and three other nuclear control technicians at the plant who spoke out by the Eureka Police Department using information provided by PG&E attorney Bert Jones.

“If these four are as militant as they are presumed to be, and now that (Rowen and Williams) have been separated from the company, it could be that they may become a menace to the local company installations or cause problems in the area or journey to certain planned jobs elsewhere,” the book quotes from a police report.

Rowen said his family would also receive anonymous death threats after the “infamous” 1970 safety meeting, terrifying his 6-year-old son Rob who received one unintentionally after picking up the phone after being told not to by his parents.

“The person who issued that probably didn’t know they were talking to a 6-year-old kid. And it scared the bejesus out of him,” he said.

With years worth of records and his own notes, Rowen began typing his story out on a typewriter in the 1970s and recently completing his compilation on a Macintosh computer.

“It’s not that I’m trying to get back at PG&E with this book, I’m trying to wake up the public,” he said. “... The purpose is to show what the nuclear industry is capable of doing, how far they’re willing to go to protect what turns out to be a failed and dangerous technology and how anyone who attempts to expose this has to be dealt with. ... If people remain ignorant of what the nuclear industry is doing and is capable of doing then nothing will change.”

After going to school at HSU, Rowen left Humboldt County and began teaching and coaching football for the Trinity Union High School District from 1972 to 2004. He now resides in Redding with his wife.

Decommissioning Unit 3

Six years after Rowen was fired, the nuclear power plant section of the Humboldt Bay Power Plant, known as Unit 3, was shut down in 1976 due to required seismic upgrade costs, McKannay said.

“During that shutdown they were looking at some of the changes that took place at that time for the nuclear safety standards and ultimately the decision was made that modifications in order to work within those standards didn’t make sense,” she said. “That’s when they made the decision to not restart Unit 3.”

The California Energy Commission website states the “experimental” plant was closed because “the economics of a required seismic retrofit could not be justified following a moderate earthquake from a previously unknown fault just off the coast.”

PG&E announced in 1983 that it was planning to decommission Unit 3, and was granted an amendment to its license by the Nuclear Regulatory Committee — the superseding agency of the Atomic Energy Commission — which permitted the unit to store the spent nuclear fuel, but not operate. PG&E began decommissioning Unit 3 in 2009, with the process expected to be fully completed by 2018, according to McKannay.

“Safety is our top priority at PG&E, a commitment that we have always taken seriously at Humboldt Bay Power Plant,” she said. “This commitment is brought to life by a very impressive safety record for our employees and contractors. 838 days without any injuries. Over two years. It’s very much a diligent safety culture at the power plant.”

Michael Welch of the Arcata-based community energy organization Redwood Alliance serves on the power plant’s community advisory board. He said his organization had been working to have PG&E decommission the plant, which eventually led to the creation of the community board nearly 17 years ago.

“We think that PG&E is doing the right thing in their methods of decommissioning and methods of storage,” he said. “We really thought it was important they decontaminate the site as much as they could. They made the decisions in a way so that it could be restored to accommodate agriculture and residential use. That’s pretty darn clean for a site that has had a lot of radiation in it. ... It’s really important to know there is nothing good that you can do with radioactive waste. There is literally no place to put this stuff that’s safe.”

Welch said he believes all of Rowen’s claims are true, but says PG&E is now “singing a different tune” at the local level than Rowen claims it was back in the 1960s and 1970s.

“I don’t think that’s the case anymore,” he said.

Rowen is holding a book signing event today at the Jogg’n Shoppe in Arcata from 12 p.m. to 3 p.m. and is set to return in early April for another event at Northtown Books in April.